Ivan Radford | On 26, Jan 2024

“Don’t tell your guys anything. They’ll figure it out. We all do.” Those are the ominous words told to Major John “Bucky” Egan (Callum Turner) after his first bombing mission. Masters of the Air, Apple TV+’s epic new drama, heeds that advice, knowing that in order to convey the horrifying loss of war, you have to show rather than tell.

The series tells the story of 100th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force, a US group sent to England in 1943. They earned the nickname the “Bloody Hundredth” – not because of the lives they took from the other side in World War II, but because of the lives they lost. The tragic scale of that tragedy becomes shockingly clear in the first episode alone. From the opening frames, this is a big, big TV show, with stunning set pieces, expansive aerial shots, soaring music and a massive star-studded cast with too many faces to keep track of. Within an hour, that becomes less of a problem, as the ensemble is thinned out in the blink of an eye – leaving everyone, including us, rattled for the rest of the series.

The show is based on the book of the same title by historian Donald L Miller and adapted for the screen by John Shiban and John Orloff. With Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman exec-producing, the result is essentially a follow-up to Band of Brothers – and it’s beeb in the works, initially at HBO, for a decade. As you’d expect from that team, with that amount of time to get it right, the production is bursting with forensically accurate details and assembled with care and passion.

Director Cary Joji Fukunaga (No Time to Die, Beasts of No Nation) helms the opening episodes with all the confidence of a Hollywood blockbuster, effortlessly merging CGI dogfights with close-ups of the cast crammed inside meticulously recreated B-17 “flying fortress” bombers to ram home the claustrophobia of each mission. We endure crash landings, engine failures, landing gear malfunctions and radio glitches sat alongside the men, and the intensity, challenges and frustration don’t let up. The moment they’ve plotted a course, enemy aircraft or shells appear and send the whole thing up in flames, often literally – and that’s a mission that’s theoretically gone well.

The cast are uniformly brilliant and sink their teeth into the material with a raw immediacy. The central duo we follow are Bucky and his best friend, Major Gale “Buck” Clevel (Austin Butler). You can see why they get along: Bucky is a hothead with an appetite for action while Buck is a cool, collected figure. Bucky is prone to looking into the distance and drawling something with calm wisdom and perspective. Buck is prone to drinking and shouting – so when he’s stunned into silence by that opening mission, the impact isn’t lost on us.

Callum Turner is excellent as the wildcard officer with a grin and a confidence that’s at once endearingly innocent and a necessary defence mechanism. He’s matched every step of the way by Austin Butler, who exudes enough charisma to make anyone in the audience follow him into the fray. They both are capable of laughing together, but neither of them take what they’re doing lightly, aware that it’s on them to guide their fellow soldiers through the death and grief ahead.

Perhaps the strongest of the bunch, though, is Anthony Boyle as Major Harry Crosby. A navigator prone to airsickness, Boyle gives his underdog a heartbreaking sense of vulnerability that has you fearing for his life every time he goes into the skies – and fearing for his mental wellbeing when tasked with doing the navigation from the ground for others.

There’s a brief appearance from the RAF, who taunt their American counterparts in a way that might seem dismissive, but what their dispute underlines is the sheer impossibility of the task the Bloody Hundredth face: where the Brits bomb at night, the US forces do it by daylight, which gives them higher accuracy but at fifty times the risk. They’re sitting ducks as they try to find their way to their destinations – and it becomes clear that losing lives in the air doesn’t even guarantee they’ll be able to reach or see those targets.

At the end of each breathtaking, heart-wrenching, nerve-racking episode, we’re reminded that more lies ahead: the ordeal is partly an ordeal just because it’s so relentless and ongoing. The bright spot is that as the series unfolds, we’ll also meet the Tuskegee Airmen (including 2nd Lieutenant Robert H Daniels played by Ncuti Gatwa), plus get to spend time with cast members including Barry Keoghan (as fast-talking New Yorker Curtis) and Raff Law (as crew chief Lemmons).

But with that growing scope and scale comes more dismay and destruction, each time poignantly introduced by Blake Neely’s stirring, cinematic opening theme that gives Band of Brothers a run for its emotional orchestral money. By framing the series through the psychological and emotional trauma of war, there’s no risk of Masters of the Air living up to the swaggering glory of its title. This is a dazzling, dizzying, disorienting feat of TV. But you’ll figure that out for yourself.

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